


One that he would call his brother

by illwynd



Series: 30 Day OTP Porn Challenge [8]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Bottom Thor (Marvel), Consent Issues, Guilt, Incest Kink, M/M, Sibling Incest, mention of Loki/Amora, other Asgardian characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:48:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26660116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: One day, when Thor is a child, his father returns from the war with a Jotun boy in tow, and Thor eagerly accepts Loki as his brother. As he grows, his feelings change… in not entirely socially acceptable ways.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Series: 30 Day OTP Porn Challenge [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/65765
Comments: 47
Kudos: 149





	1. Young Thor and the Adoption of Loki

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely 616-verse. Thor develops an incest kink. This is the one with the poetry porn.
> 
> It's also technically a fill for the 30 day otp porn challenge, "Explaining Their Kink to a Partner." Yes I'm still working on those all these years later.

> _Wandered they amidst the gardens_
> 
> _Rambled down the sunny pathways_
> 
> _Footsteps led by Thor undaunted_
> 
> _Trailing silent, clever Loki_
> 
> _Till he saw a means for mischief_
> 
> _Saw a way to sow disorder_
> 
> _Thor beside him, heart a-tremble_
> 
> _Saw before them years unfolding_
> 
> _Years of dwelling close together_
> 
> _Undaunted Thor with clever Loki_
> 
> _One that he would call his brother_

\- Rune IV, Young Thor and the Adoption of Loki

* * *

## I.

Thor remembers the day he first met Loki. 

He had been young when Odin returned from the war, victorious and at the head of a golden company, and he remembers running out to greet him but being brought up short by the sight of the sullen, dark, lank boy trudging along in his father’s wake.

The boy had eyed him warily. Odin had put a hand to his shoulder to draw him forward.

“This is my son Thor,” Odin told him. And to Thor he said, “This is Loki, the orphan son of the enemy king. I have resolved to foster him. Thus to you he will be a brother.” 

Thor, in a sudden and overwhelming excitement, had taken the strange boy by the hand and showed him around the palace. By the end of the day they were covered in dirt and scrapes and bright bruises from their first spirited scuffle, testing each other, and from his first exposure to Loki’s propensity for sly and troublesome mischief. Thor had fallen asleep that night exhausted and brimming with energy and planning already how they would spend the next day together. He had always longed to have a brother. He had never dreamed of having one as perfect as Loki, his match in every way. 

It is Thor’s first truly clear memory of happiness, and he sometimes thinks of how his life would have been different had Odin not slain Loki’s father in the snow of Jotunheim. He knows it is unworthy to celebrate the death of a stranger, yet that is what his heart wants to do. 

* * *

Quite a few years later, Thor’s happiness to have Loki as his brother had not waned at all. Loki had stopped calling Odin “ _your_ father” after a few years, and while they sometimes fought viciously, Thor supposed that was simply in the nature of brothers, so he held no grudges. (And likewise, if Loki sometimes made Thor the target of his tricks, Thor supposed that was simply in the nature of Loki.)

They were on the cusp of manhood, the future spread out bright ahead of them. Yet at that point they were still young enough to require lessons, so they sat in the gardens listening to an aged tutor as he recited for them some of the old legends less commonly told. 

A great warrior broke an oath and was cursed for it; the curse that came upon him was to fall unwittingly in love with his sister. The tutor with distaste recounted how the siblings of the tale had lain together, swearing undying love in their passion, begetting children together before the Norns allowed them both to recognize each other and their crime.

“And what was their fate?” Thor asked, frowning and unsettled.

“They died by their own hands as soon as they saw each other true, for they could not bear to live another day with such a stain upon their souls,” the old tutor answered. 

Thor could remember nothing of the rest of the lesson, only nodding along with the tutor’s assertions, his chest and throat too tight to breathe. 

Loki, as always, sat aloof a few feet away, a stick in his hand scratching idly at the dirt, seeming bored of the lesson. But when Thor could no longer resist glancing up at him, he found Loki gazing his way, a smirk upon his lips. 

“Had you truly never heard that tale before?” Loki teased afterward. “There are other versions in the archives. I’ve found some really raunchy ones.” 

“You would have,” Thor replied, trying to laugh it off, trying to nudge him back in brotherly fashion. 

But that night Thor lay abed, trying to understand why every part of him had rebelled at that answer. Why it seemed all wrong to him, when he surely knew, as everyone knew, that such incestuous desire could only be the vilest of crimes. 

By morning, with sleep never having neared him and his pillow damp under his arm, Thor knew that what he had always thought was merely the proper sentiment to feel towards one’s adored sibling was not so innocent. 

Thor was in love with his brother. 

It is Thor’s first truly clear memory of misery. 

* * *

Thor has learned to live with misery.

He lived with hearing about his brother having taken a lover in one of the sorceresses who taught him their art; he learned of this from his own friends, a casual remark from Fandral over his brother’s good taste, and had to force himself to do nothing more than give a little smile in reply and to say he was pleased for his brother.

Of course Loki would take lovers. Thor had already done so, on a few pleasant but unfulfilling occasions. Thor had no right to be jealous. 

When the others had gone on speculating and gossiping, Thor had impatiently changed the topic of conversation to discuss a possible excursion, a hunting expedition to go after a nest of fire-drakes reported on the borders. 

The expedition had distracted him, but not enough. And when he returned, it was as if he had not gone, for it seemed that the first thing he saw was Loki with his arm slung over the shoulder of a blonde woman in a green gown.

That night he had sought Loki out in his chambers, and when Loki declined to join him in the noise and hubbub of the feasting hall, Thor had easily consented to spending the evening in Loki’s chambers imbibing with him if he found the atmosphere so much more congenial there. 

Together they drained several bottles of mead, until Loki was leaning across the little table on his elbows, gesturing and explaining some strange thought he’d had while Thor watched him, his heart thumping in an endless pleasure at merely being in his brother’s presence.

And then they drank several more. 

Thor, his eyes heavy-lidded with intoxication, told himself that he would be forever happy if he could only have this. That he did not feel any urge at all to bury his hands in raven-black hair and rub his thumbs across pale skin and high cheekbones. That he did not want at all to have Loki’s smiling mouth opening under his. 

* * *

Thor does not know how he lost his brother after that. It had seemed to happen before he knew. 

It was the very next day that Loki got himself banished from Asgard for the first time. Some scheme that Loki had been working on the whole time Thor was away with his friends had blown up at last, and Thor was still asleep with a hangover when it happened. And when he woke, no amount of pleading with the Allfather would do any good, no matter that Thor knew Loki could surely have never meant the prank to have such an effect. 

“I think your father is regretting taking me in,” Loki had said, bitterly, viciously, when at last he was allowed to return and after Thor had rushed to see him in his chambers, where he paced like an animal in a cage. 

What happened after was likely Thor’s fault, for the implication was one that still hurt Thor from long ago, from their first years together when Loki knew that it could reliably be used to make him react. 

But either way, it ended badly. And the next two times Loki started mischief, Thor feigned that he agreed with Loki’s punishment, or perhaps that he just didn’t care. 

He does not like to remember those times, when he tried to feed himself lies until he sickened from them, and when he looked up again, Loki was nowhere to be seen. 

* * *

Thor remembers the first time he understood that his brother hates him. 

It was on Midgard, where everything seemed to move more quickly and fade more readily, a world of brief and fleeting life, a world whose fragility had moved Thor’s heart from the very first time he had seen it; it was there where Loki called himself Thor’s enemy for the first time.

“Don’t you see?” Loki hissed as they fought, one immortal to another. “This is what your father always intended. For me to be the shadow to your light; for me to be the darkness against which you would shine. Come on, then—burn, if you would!” 

Loki left him little choice but to fight, but all Thor could think of was the first day he had ever known his brother, their testing scuffles upon the lush, green lawns of Asgard, little battles that bruised them through their laughter. 

If Odin had truly intended them to be at odds, then his father was a fool, for all Thor himself had ever wanted—

Loki stabbed him in that moment and fled before Thor could speak another word. 

* * *

Loki has ever been stubborn, and now they have been apart and at odds for years, and Thor has become convinced that his father is indeed a fool for how often Loki has been banished, and for the coldness that greets him upon his occasional reprieves that only ensures he will not remain at home long. 

And by now Loki knows it as well, for when Thor comes hesitantly to his chamber door the night after they walked the Bifrost together, he finds Loki shoving a few trinkets from his shelves into a box, as if he expects he might never return. 

“How often will I have to remind you that we are not kin?” Loki asks coolly when Thor greets him, calling him brother. 

Thor does not say that he does not care about blood; he does not insist that what matters is that they were raised together, that they loved each other as brothers for so long. What he does is to bring out the bottle of mead that he had been hiding behind his back. 

“Would you share this with me anyway, kin or not?” he says. 

Loki glowers at him and seems about to refuse. But then, with that old glint of mischief in his eye he smiles. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s have it.” 

* * *

They wake the next morning in bed together, which is odd, for Thor is certain nothing… happened. They are still mostly clothed, for one.

He lies there, a sunbeam crawling onto his body and warming him where he lies spooned up against his brother, and he is not sure how they came to be like this until at last Loki rouses and twists in his arms. He lies on his back, yawning and looking pleased. 

“It was a flimsy excuse,” Loki tells him. “You said you wanted to sleep beside me. _Innocently_. Like when we were children.”

Thor stares at him and waits; Loki is giving him a smirk he knows too well.

“But that was after you had already kissed me, so I don’t know why you expected me to believe that, even if you were drowning in the maudlin depths of sentiment over my return.”

Thor feels that he can barely breathe. Loki twists yet more, so that they lie face to face, and laughs, reaching out to stroke Thor’s cheek. 

Thor remembers that kiss, through the haze. He remembers drawing Loki to him, his heart racing, and feeling Loki’s lips open beneath his in surprise. He remembers burying his hands in raven-black hair and hearing himself whimper and sigh at the feel of Loki’s tongue hot and furtive against his. 

“Brother… brother…” Thor had moaned into the kiss, glad again with all his heart that Laufey had been slain and Loki had been given to him as a brother, to fight, to hate, to love…

He remembers feeling Loki’s arms coming up to shove him back. 

“What is wrong with y—I am _not_ your brother, you fool!”

The scuffle ended with that shout, with Thor on his back on the bed and Loki atop him, snarling in rage. 

“But I want you to be,” Thor said. “Please…”

* * *

Now Loki is gazing at him with the same assessing, narrowed eyes, his fingers still dancing along the line of Thor’s jaw. 

“So do you still want me… brother?”

Thor almost can’t stand it, what just that word does to him. He shivers with lust and shame and he knows Loki sees it. Loki’s hand trails down his neck as he leans near, lips pausing so close to Thor’s that he can feel their warmth, his breaths sweeping down between them, waiting.

In the next moment, Thor will turn himself into the vilest sort of criminal. 

But he has wanted this for hundreds of years, so long that to be this near to having it at last is a brutal pain. And he hesitates on the edge, until Loki gives him a shove.

Loki pushes him onto his back again, playfully, as if they were children wrestling each other over nothing, and then his hands are on the fastenings of their remaining clothes, yanking them away and off.

“What would mother and father say if they saw us like this, I wonder?” Loki teases him, or at least it is meant to be a taunt but it is just at that moment that Loki tugs his breeches down, and Thor’s aching cock springs free. Loki palms it—making Thor gasp at the sudden contact—and his eyes widen, and his voice goes darker. “… if they knew what you feel for your dear, terrible little brother.” 

Thor knows that despite Loki’s conviction that they are not kin, the trickster could use this to destroy him. No one else treats their centuries of brotherhood so casually as Loki does. No one else sees it as nothing. Thor’s mere desires, not even the fulfillment of them, would be met with revulsion.

“What would all Asgard say of you if they heard about this? You—the glorious golden hero. The perfect one,” Loki sneers. “All this time they’ve spent revering you, with no idea of your dark depths. What other secrets have you been hiding, O Mighty Thor?”

All the while, Loki continues to touch him, stroking his cock almost absentmindedly.

And what can he answer?

This has been his one great, dark secret for as long as he can remember. _He is in love with his brother. He desires his brother. He has dreamed of so many things between them, knowing all the while how disgraceful and wrong it is. He cannot help it._

 _Then why did you let everyone believe the stories they told?_ He had benefited for years from how Asgard saw him. How Asgard saw his brother. The natural tale that seemed to unfold. He had never disabused them of the notion. And that, to him, suddenly seems more disgraceful than any desire that has ever burned in his loins. 

The knowledge chokes in his throat as he answers. “Just that one. I… I desire you, brother. I desire you because you are my brother. And because _Loki_ is my brother. It is all one to me.”

Loki continues stroking him, contemplative, and Thor knows his brother well enough to be aware that Loki enjoys what a torment it is. He can feel the pace of his own heart in the way his organ throbs in Loki’s grasp. 

“And you should do it,” Thor continues, trying to keep his wits despite the rolling pleasure and the growing tension. “ You should tell them all. I beg you. You are right. I deserve to be cut down.”

Loki is watching him with narrowed eyes. He considers this for several moments. “So you could forever then feel magnanimous between us? So you could then forever lord over me what you had sacrificed?”

Thor frowns. “I didn’t mean…”

“If you would tell them, you’ll have to do it yourself,” Loki spits. “Honestly, I much prefer this state of things. I much prefer that we _both_ know the truth, yet no one else does.”

He says this, and then he lowers his head between Thor’s legs, and before Thor can even think what to do, how to react, whether he even _wishes_ so suddenly to dive from the cliffside into things that were before this night the wildest of fantasies, Loki has taken Thor’s length into his hot, wet, treacherous mouth. 

Thor cries out, and Loki pushes against Thor’s knees, moving him. Spreading his thighs wide and then entrapping them in his arms, pulling so that his knees tighten around Loki’s form, so that he is holding Loki there but Loki is forcing him to do so. So that he can no longer tell whose will, whose strength it is.

Loki sucks him, taking him deep, sucking him fiercely, and Thor’s mind washes over with white light. 

He thinks, momentarily, of his other affairs, and how bland and tepid they seem in comparison to this, this intensity, this sensation that grips not just the physical, animal urge for completion but… something deeper. He feels it in his chest as he groans and writhes and thrusts into Loki’s mouth, and Loki somehow laughs around his length and lets him. He feels it, how it spreads through all his limbs, making him want to pull and cling and hold. 

It is different because it is his _brother_. He knows it. This act is forbidden because it is _perfect_. Because who would ever choose anyone else, if they could have as lover the deepest companion of their soul? The one by which they learned to measure themselves, from earliest years? The one they grew with, protected, argued with, fought beside? Any other union seems distant and cold in comparison. And anyone who dared to feel _this_ would never be satisfied with any lesser union again. 

Thor is trembling with rising excitement when Loki pulls back. Thor’s body is alight with it, and he moans a sound of loss when Loki’s mouth leaves him.

Loki wipes the smeared saliva from his mouth with the back of his hand, and that act seems the height of lewdness. “You truly mean it, don’t you?” he asks, as if he hadn’t quite believed, even with Thor’s cock hot and hard against his tongue, Thor’s pleading fingers in his hair. “How far would you go? Would you let me take you? If I told you that you could have your brother in your bed but only if you will allow me between your legs, to possess you. Would you let me?”

Thor can barely think it. At least not without the thought tipping him over the edge. He envisions it carefully, holding tight to the last threads of control. He imagines Loki wrestling him into a feigned defeat, playful as when they were young, and then mounting atop him—

Thor has to stop his imaginings from going any further. He breathes, tries to blink the haze of desperate need from his eyes. No one has ever had him that way. 

Loki should be the one who does. Now that Thor has thought it, he knows it is what he wants.

“Yes,” he whispers, and he spreads his thighs wider, though Loki already occupies the space between them. “Yes, Loki. Do it. Take me.”

For a moment Loki studies him. Then his lips split in a vicious smile. “I wasn’t offering to. I was just asking if you _would_.” 

The words sink into Thor’s belly like a stone, growing heavier as Loki primly pulls back from him, one eyebrow lifted at the picture he makes lying there, his spit-slick erection still pointing skyward, the flush of lust deep on his skin. 

The humiliation burns. The rejection stings. As Loki surely intended. But Thor masters it all as well as he can, masters himself with a few deep breaths. Pushes up on his hands, tucks himself away to feel a little less vulnerable. He refuses to let himself cringe from Loki’s glance after such words, so instead he forces himself to watch as Loki moves back and turns away, with great show of casualness. 

Thor’s tongue does not wish to move. His throat is thick. But he must ask. “Is… is there anything I can do to change your answer?”

“I cannot think of a thing.”

Thor hesitates. “Do you desire me at all?”

This time it is no calm, steady voice. This time Loki’s eyes flash. “Thor, I _loathe_ you.”

“But you were just… if you didn’t want to, then wh—”

The sound Loki makes is one of frustration. “To see what you would do. What other reason do I need? I certainly don’t need to _desire_ anything to do that.”

Thor takes this in. Sets aside his own wishes and feelings, and tries to comprehend it. But all he can really do is take Loki at his word. 

When he does, sadness sets in. Loss, the loss of something he hasn’t truly had for years, or even—

“Have you always hated me?”

“Thor, if you begin crying in my bed again, I swear I will throttle you.”

Loki is not quite true to his word, at least; when Thor must immediately wipe at his eyes, he simply gives Thor a withering glare and then heaves a sigh of exhaustion. 

“Enough. Out. I gave you the night you asked for, and I still have things to take care of before I leave.”

Thor listens to this and the stone in his stomach grows even heavier. So Loki is truly planning to go. Thor had not wanted to believe it. But he gets up, gathering the boots and armor he had strewn on the floor before they slept. He stands near the door, gazing back at where Loki, with an approximation of patience, fusses with some things on one of his shelves. He burns Loki’s image into his mind, with a terror that he might never see him again.

“No matter where you go, no matter what you feel about me… I will always think of you as my brother,” Thor tells him. 

Loki turns back, and his eyes narrow for the briefest moment, just as the corner of his lip flicks upward. “And you have my permission to _think of_ me doing whatever you like to you, _brother_.” 

Loki says it like a curse, but it trembles through Thor’s mind like something else entirely as he closes the door behind him.

* * *

Next: Thor Seeks Insight


	2. Thor Seeks Insight

> _Lost Thor is without his brother_
> 
> _Clever Loki, fled from Asgard_
> 
> _Casting thought from thunder’s purview_
> 
> _Faring lone in moon-drenched mountains_
> 
> _Lost is Thor in wondering torment_
> 
> _Gone is all that once seemed certain_
> 
> _So Thor seeks for means of healing_
> 
> _Seeks it, struggling, in strange places_
> 
> _Caught within their past’s unfolding_

\- Rune VII, Thor Seeks Insight

* * *

## II.

By the next day, Loki is indeed gone, slipped away to Norns knew where. 

That is nothing new in itself, of course, and at first Thor tries to simply walk through the motions of his life, as if nothing had changed. 

But everything had changed. For the first time, someone knew the secret he had kept within himself for ages. That alone would have been enough to turn everything strange. But then there was the conversation that had surrounded that revelation. 

Thor could not stop thinking about it. 

Loki was right. Thor had wronged him. All these years he had suffered guilt for his desires, or rather for barely feeling guilty for them at all. Yet never once had he felt guilt for being favored by the people, by his father, by Asgard. Never once had he looked at the disparity between them and thought to somehow… amend it. To give up his undeserved honors, or lift up Loki’s name. He had never thought it, only spent the years thinking of his own torments, his own wishes.

He must do better. 

The trouble is that he is not sure, at this point, what can be done. It seems the years have gone far beyond the place where he might have solved this simply, with a few words, a few actions. 

Yet he still must try. And he begins where seems easiest, or at least where failure will bring no other bruises. 

He waits until two evenings hence, when he is spending what ought to be a pleasant night of carousing with his friends, to ask them…

“Have you ever thought about whether you have misjudged my brother?” he asks them during a lull in the conversation. 

Fandral leans forward, a solicitous look on his face. “What has he done this time?”

Thor frowns. “He hasn’t done anything. I mean, except left Asgard once more.”

Dubious looks all around the table. 

“And that is what I mean! Does he truly deserve such distrust?”

This garners a few guffaws from Volstagg and an eyeroll from Sif. “Thor, we know he’s your brother,” Volstagg adds, with at least a tone of vaguely apologetic reasonableness. “But we’re not slandering him if we say he is hardly trustworthy. It’s common knowledge. It is like someone remarking upon Fandral’s favor among the fairer sex, or my appetite, or your renowned might.”

Thor is not quite sure how he imagined this conversation going. But this is not it. He seeks for the words he had so carefully prepared. “But… was he always so? Were any of us always as we are now, or is it because we are told by those around us what they expect us to be? Would I be so sure of my might if it were _not_ renowned? What if it is only so because I am told it must be?”

Thor looks around the table, but is met with only wary, uncertain stares. Hogun’s face, particularly, is a picture. 

Fandral leans back toward him, patting him on the shoulder in a manner of camaraderie. “That is the sound of a man whose head has been thoroughly turned about by his local trickster and liesmith. It will pass, Thor, just as his current scheme will end, and all will be well.”

Thor looks from one of his friends to another, and he understands that they will not hear him. They mean well. They care for him, and they do not truly hold any malice for Loki. But they will not listen. Their minds are set.

Thor tries to shrug it all off, because the alternative is to storm away in the fury that suddenly blooms inside him, mostly directed at himself, and that would do no good at all.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he says, with a tight smile. “Perhaps I am simply mistaken.”

The conversation continues on its typical ambling path, and Thor tries to follow it, though it is harder tonight than he can ever recall.

* * *

The next idea on his list… Thor is even more hesitant to enact it. But after the experience of broaching the topic with his friends, he knows better how to prepare. 

He plans his entire argument. He rehearses the exact words he will say. He plans the moment he will begin it. 

“Father,” he says, in a moment when they are alone and he can speak freely, with no more pressing business forthcoming to call their attention away. “There is a matter of some importance that I wish to speak to you about.”

Odin raises an eyebrow at him, a look of surprised approval. “Oh? By all means, my son.”

“The matter… concerns my brother.”

Thor is watching for it, the slight tension that comes into Odin’s mouth then, but he gives no sign and simply forges on ahead. 

“From the moment you brought him to our family from the war with Jotunheim, I have loved him. I have been grateful to have him as my brother. But just the other night, I watched him prepare to leave us again,” Thor says, and he does not have to feign the emotion in his voice. “And I wondered how it can be that we judge him so poorly that he would rather walk away from those who have for centuries called him kin. Is this why you brought him here? To be no more than a shadow and a failure of our house?”

Thor crafted these words, struggled with them as fiercely as ever he had struggled with an enemy, and he meant to shame without shaming. To make his father remember the better impulses that had brought Loki here. Compassion for an orphan child upon a battlefield. In such compassion, there would have to be the capacity for forbearance, wouldn’t there? To wipe slates clean and start anew? 

Thor waits as Odin considers his words, and he hopes he has crafted them well. 

He sees Odin’s brow wrinkle. 

“I am glad that you think of him so fondly,” Odin says at last. “And it is a credit to your spirit that you continue to love him, even blindly. But a king cannot be blind. If you wish to believe that we have failed him, you may do so. But we cannot ignore his actions, proven time and again. We cannot grant him the indulgence we once did.”

Thor wants to argue. He even begins. But can hear the finality in the words, and he manages to stop himself from going further, from saying anything he will not be able to take back.

Instead, he holds his tongue and nods in acquiescence before he makes his excuses and departs.

* * *

It is a petulant reaction, but he cannot help it. Throwing himself down upon his bed, feeling ignored, feeling demeaned. Feeling that the world is mad and no one will listen.

And he imagines Loki here with him now. 

“I know how it feels, now,” he whispers to him in his fantasy. “Is that enough?”

The Loki of his mind laughs. “Hardly.”

But the Loki of his mind divests Thor of his trousers and smirks at his hardness and takes him into his mouth again, the mouth Thor remembers so keenly. He will never forget how that felt—if he never has the chance again, he will cling to that memory, and even that thought is filthy. 

_Your brother sucked your cock to test you. To see whether you would allow such a vile deed upon your very flesh. And you will relive it, secretly, every night if you can, won’t you?_

He would. 

Midway through, though, his mind wanders. He had been thinking how skilled Loki’s tongue had been… and how eager he himself had been to let Loki take him… and wondering how that would have felt. He can imagine it, if only because he is certain that the intensity would hold true. He imagines that intensity filling him, pounding inside him. 

Loki would be the first to have him that way. But he would not be the first to feel Loki inside them, would he? It is not a thought that surprises him. It is nothing he hasn’t known for years. But it is a thought that intrudes in this moment, with a jolt of sorrow. 

He sets it aside, biting his lip and stroking himself and thinking of _being with_ his brother in any way he is allowed, while his body tenses with waves of pleasure. 

As he lies there afterward, sorrow lingering with the fading rush, he thinks of how that is undoubtedly the only path left to him to try.

* * *

He knows her, of course. He even recalls a brief time when she had quite obviously attempted to catch his eye. 

That had been before the rumors circulated. Before she and Loki had begun spending time together. 

If he’d had any interest before that (very little, in fact; he is aware that she is both clever and beautiful, but she is… well, too blonde for his taste), it had decidedly soured then, for reasons he had been unwilling to admit at the time.

But he certainly knows her enough to know how to seek her out, and he is a little surprised when she welcomes him to her abode with a vaguely distant warmth.

“Your Highness,” Amora says, “What an unexpected pleasure.”

She invites him in, and he peers around at the various artifacts whose magical significance he is certain of, though he knows nothing about what they truly are. Loki surely would. He wonders how many hours Loki spent here, learning from her, or more than that. He wonders what they spoke of together. If Loki ever… said anything about him. About their brotherhood. 

He does not ask.

Instead, Thor smiles at her and forces himself to spend a few minutes on social niceties. To do something other than simply come here pleading for help.

But it all weighs on him, everything that has happened. Like the oppression of an approaching storm on a hot summer day, the air thick and tense with what is to come. He asks how she has been, expresses interest in one of Asgard’s fine seiðkonur. Tries to do so earnestly. 

In the midst of smalltalk, she studies his face.

“My dear thunder god, whatever is troubling you, you can simply _tell_ me.”

Thor blinks.

And then he does just as she suggests. He takes a breath and tells her… well, not the whole story. But parts of it. Like how Loki has left again, and how they had a conversation prior to his departure that made Thor rethink much of their lives together as brothers. And how he is now at a loss for how to redress old wrongs, or even how to find Loki to tell him he has done so, if he manages it.

Amora listens. Well, she does hold up a finger when he has gotten a minute into his explanation and, when he pauses, drags him into the next room, makes him sit, presses a cup of something bitter but soothing into his hands. He doesn’t even mind that it is likely some strange sorcerous potion. As long as it eases his soul.

(She tells him, when he asks, that it is simply tea. A good tea with calming herbs and that sort of thing. But just tea.)

It is strange enough being here, speaking of this to _her_. He does not like to remember how it felt, years ago, even to hear her name after the rumors reached his ears about what she and Loki were to each other. 

He will take anything to wash any of that lingering shame away and simply… speak to her of what he hopes to learn now. 

When he finishes, she is sat across from him, and she tilts her head. “Well, I understand the moroseness, now, but why come to _me_?”

“I thought… perhaps he would leave some word with you. Or that you would be able to contact him… or tell me what to do to make things right with him.”

“Why would you expect me to know any of that?”

“Was Loki not your lover for a time?” 

Amora looks quizzical. “Lover? I would not put it that way. I taught him a few things, certainly, and not simply spellcraft. But with him it was merely practical. He had little interest in passion. At least not with me.” 

Her eyes are a strange green, a bright, catlike shade that seems to glitter in the light, and she smiles with a wry twist to her lips, as if there is more she is not saying. 

“What do you mean?” Thor asks. “Please, Amora. I beseech you. If there is anything you know that could aid me… I would reward you greatly, with anything that is within my power.”

“Thor, if there were anything I knew, I would most likely have to betray the confidence of a fellow sorcerer to tell you. And you would not have me do such a thing, would you?” She smiles sweetly and bats her eyelashes at him like the innocent young girl they both know she is not. “If you care nothing for my honor, then at least for the sake of my safety. We mages are a dangerous kind, you know.”

“I know,” Thor says, and his heart aches for even that little reminder of his brother. Of all that his brother is.

* * *

Days pass with no word of Loki. Not that anyone but Thor is listening for any.

He has run out of options, run out of plans. So instead he finds himself wandering the paths of memory, aimless. 

One of them brings him to a corner of the gardens, and he remembers a long-ago lesson. Listening with growing horror as his tutor spoke of the incestuous lust between a pair of siblings, and the downfall that befell them thereafter. And being aware, out of the corner of his eye, of Loki’s faint smirk, his haughty look, his bored and idle sketching in the dirt at their feet.

When Thor leaves the gardens, he walks with purpose. 

He knows what to do. Or, rather, he at least knows where to seek his answers. 

Thus it is that he finds himself in the palace libraries, looking for the books Loki once mentioned with other versions of that same tale. 

It is not too difficult to find them, though he knows the archivists, quiet men and women with sharp eyes and ink-stained fingers, are puzzled by his search.

He finds every version he can, lays them all out upon a table hidden away in a shadowy back corner of the place. 

The first few he reads are just what he remembers from their old lessons. A few differences here and there. Sometimes, the hero of the legend finds a peasant girl on the road and takes her to his bed, and when they wake she hears him speak his name and knows him for her kin. Sometimes, their affair lasts months while her belly swells, before she casts herself from a cliffside, and his sword sings how gladly it will spill his blood when he turns it upon himself.

Version after version. Page after page Thor turns. 

Where are the ones Loki spoke of? The filthy ones? All he can find is wretchedness. 

He breathes fast and hard, until he has to put his head down upon his folded arms upon the table. He has to close his eyes, not even to rest but just to pull to himself any calm he can gather. 

The silence around him echoes, and eventually he sits up straight again, opens the next book. 

It does not have the answers he sought. Nor does the next. Nor the one after that. 

He has nearly given up—gone back to the shelf to return them to their place—when he sees the slim volume pushed, half-hidden, to the back, and carefully he retrieves it. 

Its cover proclaims it simply another retelling of a familiar tale.

Yet when Thor opens it midway through, he can immediately note the difference.

> — _and brother leaves his seed in sister_
> 
> _Leaves her slickened with his semen_
> 
> _Fills her crevice, flushed with pleasure_
> 
> _Makes her drip with birth foretelling._
> 
> _She in turn runs fingers through it_
> 
> _Begs him come again inside her_
> 
> _Make their child come forth from kindred_

Thor blushes; he cannot help it. He flips a dozen pages further.

> — _rounded breast so swollen_
> 
> _At her breast their child does suckle_
> 
> _While she sleeps in dreams unbidden_
> 
> _Watches he from darkened doorway_
> 
> _Hopeless for a joyous future_
> 
> _Seeing shadow spread before them_

This time Thor frowns. Pages turn under his thumb, whispering.

> — _all sworn to him_
> 
> _The home from which he had been driven_
> 
> _Those for whom his vengeance flourished_
> 
> _Sing in praise of sister’s lover_
> 
> _He who they once sent to ruin_
> 
> _Now he sits with eyes astounded_
> 
> _Gazing at these folk who shunned him_
> 
> _He who they once tore asunder_
> 
> _Lauded now for deeds once hidden_
> 
> _Deeds of faith and feats of cunning_

Thor pauses. Studies the last few stanzas again, then flips half a dozen pages back once more. Reads on. Back again, leaving a finger slipped between the pale leaves to mark the particular passage. Frowns and tries to piece it all together into something that will make sense. 

Something that will tell him what he needs to do.

Before he is done, one of the archivists comes to place a little lantern, lit by magic, down on the table beside him, when the light through the window fails.

He thanks them with an absent nod of his head.

* * *

Thor borrows that little volume, in fact, so that he can study it privately and think on it more. (Not more than that. He would deny it.)

In every version of the tale Thor has ever known, the siblings’ affair always ends in disaster. The sister casts herself from a tall cliff, or into a rushing river, or opens her own veins to escape the stain of what they had done. In every other version, the brother meets his doom soon after, in disgrace. 

And some, it was true, dwelled on the forbidden nature of their joining together. Long-ago poets had told of their nights together—whether few or many—with more words than it took to condemn. Instead lingering over the wretchedness of it. How this act that was meant to be the joining of souls was instead what brought their ruin. 

But in this one version… 

Thor keeps the little book on his nightstand. Touches it with a gentle finger before he lays his head on his pillow before rest, for the comfort it gives. For the feeling of hope.

The only trouble is that the ending it offers is hardly one he can follow; Loki is unlikely to slay any dragons in secret, as far as Thor can tell.

* * *

Thor’s dilemma is unlike the old legend. He and Loki are not the siblings from the tales. Not least because Loki does not feel the same desire. Not least because Loki hates him, and with fair reason. It is tempting to take heart in the one hopeful version of the story he found and conclude that everything will work out between them in the end.

No matter what Loki would say of him, Thor is not _that_ foolish. 

He knows he must find his own solution, or one may never come. He should certainly not rely on Loki to provide it. Not after Loki has made his intentions quite clear.

But he does find himself thinking of something Loki once said. How he had once claimed that Odin’s purpose in bringing him to Asgard had been to have Loki serve as the shadow to Thor’s light. To serve as a contrast to him and make his victories seem greater thereby.

Thor thinks of it, recalls the battle between them which had caused Loki to shout those furious words. 

And he recalls what he heard from his friends in days past, and from his father, about what they believe of Loki and why. 

He thinks again also, oddly, of Amora. She had answered his queries for perhaps an hour and then graciously bade him farewell when he saw that he would learn no more from her. She had answered everything he asked, but told him very little that he did not already know. 

He had just been reeling, quietly, from the revelation that whatever she and Loki had been to each other, it had not held Loki’s heart. 

It gave him no help in finding his brother or reaching him or convincing him. But had not Thor, at that news, sunk down into the soft-cushioned chair in Amora’s hall, feeling as if he could breathe again and had not even known he had been stifled?

As a matter of fact, it had taken him several minutes to gather himself afterward. And when he had, he’d struggled, grasping for anything that still might avail him. 

“I will not ask you to break any confidences,” he had said to her. “But you know my brother well, do you not? And, as you said, you are both powerful mages, so you have seen him in ways I may never have. If I have so offended him, is there any way I can call him back to me? Is there anything I can do to mend the rift between us?”

Amora had gazed back at him, and suddenly her lips had twisted in delighted humor. “You’re asking me if there is any way to make Loki forget a slight? I’d hardly need to know Loki very well to answer that. But just in case you somehow missed that part of your brother’s nature, _no_. He will remember it until it is undone. Or perhaps longer. I doubt he would even _wish_ to set it aside if he could. His memory for a grudge is certainly not one of his most obliging qualities.”

_Until it is undone,_ Thor finds himself thinking now. And he has already tried to argue among those close to him that they should not view Loki so harshly as they do. He has sought advice from those close to Loki, and he has sought insight from old tales. What is left to try? What else can he attempt?

_Until it is undone._

Without light, there would be no shadow. Light, in a way, is perhaps the more unnatural state. Before the universe began, all was in darkness. There is a comfort in it, like the quiet calm of nighttime, when rest comes. Like the darkness under the soil; without it, nothing would grow.

Thor longs to join his brother in darkness, if that is where he can find him. No more separation of light and shadow. No more conflict at their meeting.

An idea comes.

* * *

Next: Loki's Answer


	3. Loki's Answer

> _Winged messenger approaches_
> 
> _Comes to Loki on his journey_
> 
> _Bringing secrets to sly Loki_
> 
> _Loki listens, keeping silent_
> 
> _Answers long he held within him_
> 
> _Still are hidden there and never_
> 
> _Let to spill from lips of trickster_
> 
> _Still he turns that very moment_
> 
> _Turns toward he who calls him kindred_
> 
> _Turns toward thunderer undaunted_
> 
> _Goes to seek him—and to stop him_

\- Rune IX, Loki’s Answer 

* * *

## III.

Loki is hip-deep in a new plot he has been forging on Nidavellir—one involving the dwarves, and the dragons that dwell in the mountains, and, oh, it barely matters—when the message reaches him. Carried not by one of his adoptive father’s raven emissaries, yet the messenger is winged just the same. Small and flitting and with a bright yellow-green glow about its sleek feathers. 

It’s one of Amora’s, of course, and Loki frowns. She has not been his teacher in centuries. They maintain a sort of distant alliance of mutual benefit and convenience, though, so if she is sending word to him… something must be going on. 

He stops what he is doing and listens, letting the little construct of a bird alight on his hand and speak into his ear. 

Loki’s frown deepens as it does. 

_Thor came to speak with Amora, hoping she could contact Loki_ _for him. Thor is restless. Thor is surely going to do something reckless as a result. There are rumors of a proclamation of some kind, though no one knows what it is meant to be about. Loki will probably not want to miss all the fun, whatever it is._

Soon after, Loki watches the little bird fly off into Nidavellir’s grey sky, and he does not even feign to go back to his planning. For a moment he taps his fingers against the window sill. Stares off into the distance, knowing himself well enough to know what he is about to do, and knowing that nothing could stop him from doing it. 

He had honestly thought he would be able to hold out longer. After what had happened between him and Thor last time… well, Loki’d had to get away. He could not let Thor get any ideas. 

Vivid memories of Thor’s fingers in his hair, tugging him closer desperately while Loki, undoubtedly, sucked him better than anyone ever had before. 

And the feeling in his belly of what he had said afterward. It was better than their battles upon the streets of Midgard. It was better than their ancient, childish scuffles. Watching the sharp of his blade strike home and watching Thor try to deny it, try to deny that he had been wounded. That _Loki_ could deal him such injury, with only words. 

And what is Thor planning now? Loki thinks of the little bird’s message, and he can practically hear it in Amora’s voice, her amused laughter. 

“ _What_ is it with you and Thor?” she had asked him long ago. “If I did not know better, I would say you are obsessed with him.” 

At the time, Loki had fumed and scowled and denied it. 

At the time, he’d gone home to his chambers in the palace, a mere wall separating him from his adoptive brother. He was not obsessed. Thor was simply that _maddening_. Anyone would feel as he did. 

And this time, just before he’d left, he’d listened while his drunken brother told him all the secrets he had long held inside. 

“I desire you,” he had said, strands of blond falling into his unfocused blue eyes, no matter how he tried to push them back, “because you are my brother. And because my brother is _Loki._ ”

And Thor had kissed him then.

Loki could have torn everything down in that moment. He had never been so enraged. 

And now he grits his teeth, somehow _knowing_ what Thor is planning. Thor had said as much last time, hadn’t he? Sobbing out his guilt and saying that Loki ought to tell all of Asgard about his shameful, incestuous desire. 

Thor is a fool.

Before evening comes, Loki is on his way back to Asgard, in spite of himself.

* * *

The day comes, and to Thor, there is a feeling of unreality about it. 

He has faced many battles, many foes. Yet in this moment he feels more fear, more trepidation than he ever had at the prospect of injury or death at an enemy’s hands. 

He does not even truly know what he will say. Only that he must change how all Asgard sees him. Whether he must remove himself from Odin’s line, or tell his most shameful secrets, or…

Whatever he must do.

He closes the door of his chambers without being aware of his own motions, or else that may be all he is aware of. Each tiny motion. The feeling of his own chest rising and falling with breath. The feel of his footfalls on the floor. The noise in his ears, like the roar of the sea.

He is halfway to his destination, and expecting nothing less, when the snarl breaks the silence, and Loki is upon him almost before he is aware, shoving him against the wall. Thor could push back, couldn’t he? He does not want to. Loki’s hands press against him.

Loki’s teeth are bared. “What are you doing?” he demands.

“I was…” Thor begins. “I was going to tell them all that they have lauded me for no reason. I am not what they believe me to be, and they should not…”

Still, before him, Loki fumes.

“And why are you doing _that_?” 

Because his brother matters more to him than all the rest of Asgard. And because he knows what he wants is a fantasy, and Loki will never return his feeling, but he wants it too badly not to do anything… no matter how foolish...

He doesn’t say that, though. Loki would only roll his eyes. Or worse. 

“Because… I don’t deserve their acclaim, and I would have everyone know...” 

Another shove. “I asked you _why_ , not what excuses you would give.”

Thor blinks, and he feels almost that he has gone blind, although the vision of Loki’s face is very much before him. 

It is difficult, being pinned beneath Loki’s gaze.

“Because after we last spoke, I realized that I should have done so long ago.”

Loki’s eyes narrow, despite the way his lips are pulled back in a vicious smile. He speaks through clenched teeth. “Do I need to ask again? You went to Amora, asking about me. And now I hear about _this_ , whatever this is. As if you meant it as a message to me.”

Thor swallows. “I did.”

“But did I not tell you this is not what _I_ want?”

_I much prefer this state of things. I much prefer that we both know the truth, yet no one else does._

Thor remembers Loki saying that. But he hadn’t understood it then, and he doesn’t understand it now.

“I meant to do this for you,” he insists. “You will no longer be constrained to my shadow if I no longer cast one.”

Loki shakes his head. “You can’t do that, Thor.”

Loki’s eyes are dark, terrifying… and Thor can suddenly see the lust in them. And he can suddenly again feel the wall against his back, and he is suddenly aware of the empty hallway around them and the hiss of Loki’s whisper against his skin as he leans nearer.

“You can’t. Because I do not _want_ you mending everything you feel guilty for. I _want_ you in my debt. I want to know that I can take you, and I can punish you, and you will welcome it.” Loki’s hand is suddenly between Thor’s legs, grasping him through his clothing—right here in the hallway, where anyone could stumble upon them—but it is a rough, cruel grip that feels him harden even as he resists the urge to whimper from the sting of pain. 

Thor still manages to gasp out the question that torments him. “You said you did not desire me.”

Loki’s smile is knife-sharp. “Did you think I would give you such power over me as to admit it? Only you are that much of a fool, _brother_.”

Thor shudders at the delicious sensation of those words brushing against his ears. The cruelty of them, the tangle of meanings and intentions. To be called _brother_ , by one who is stroking him to hardness and shoving his back against the wall. 

He remembers his long-ago excitement, their first day together, when Odin brought a sullen, dark-haired, dangerous-looking boy home with him from Jotunheim. How quick Thor was to begin calling Loki his brother. How much longer it took for Loki to begin saying the same. Loki would not grant _anyone_ such power over him. 

He remembers how they fought. How they measured themselves against each other. He remembers it when Loki drags him back to his chambers, locking the door behind them with a gesture, and shoves him toward the bed and down upon it. He remembers it when Loki, with just as quick and simple of a gesture, divests him of his trousers and his smallclothes. He remembers it when Loki slides between his thighs, pushing them wide apart.

It is his brother, his _brother_ doing this.

And more than that, how long has Thor known, with certainty, that his brother loathes him, does not wish to be near him, wishes only to meet him with rage?

Yet Loki now flows over him, a wave of heat and intensity that Thor can feel on each bared inch of skin. Loki’s eyes are fierce and dark, yes. Darker than they’d ever been in their early scuffles. 

Loki’s garments are still on, and he leans over Thor, and Thor cannot help but love the disparity. He has always wanted to be vulnerable before Loki, hasn’t he? And he has always known that Loki is wary, untrusting. It is all right. He does not want to ask any more than Loki will give.

“Last time you wanted me to take you,” Loki breathes, and Thor feels it like a shiver, all down his spine. “Do you still want that?”

Thor bites his own lip, almost hard enough to bleed.

“Tell me, _brother_.”

> — _and locked together_
> 
> _Kindred bared in desperation_
> 
> _Heated skin and darkened chamber_
> 
> _All to bring a moment’s pleasure_
> 
> _Ward against despair around them_
> 
> _None would know this moment’s glory_

Thor squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them again, to see Loki gazing down at him. 

“I want to be yours,” Thor says. 

Everything after that seems to happen slowly, deliberately. Loki reaching down between Thor’s legs, and Thor feels his fingers—slickened with oil, perhaps—touching him. 

“I told you that I want you so that I can treat you cruelly, didn’t I?” Loki asks while he does it. 

Thor nods as Loki’s fingers twist.

“I have never been a kindly, tender brother to you, have I?”

Thor feels his cheeks flush, though he is not sure why.

“So why do you desire _your brother’s_ touch? What is wrong with you, Thor? No one in all Asgard desires _me_. Certainly not in comparison to you. They all know I do not belong here. They all know I am a danger best discarded. What is wrong with _you_?”

Loki asks this while his fingers are buried within the heat of Thor’s body, and that makes it difficult to answer. 

> — _she wrapped her limbs around him_
> 
> _Spoke of secrets held within her_
> 
> _Secrets bent him close beside her._

Loki bends nearer to him. “Tell me, Thor.”

Thor moans. “Please. Please, Loki, take me.”

Such a strange silence it is. Their eyes flickering over each other. The little motions to fit against each other. The little motions to fit together. Thor squirming, writhing, thighs spreading; Loki lining himself up with the entry to Thor’s body and then forcing inside him.

It is all the intensity Thor ever dreamed and more. 

With his ankles he pins Loki near him, against him, so that he is forcing Loki to penetrate yet deeper inside him and he no longer can tell whose strength it is that makes it happen. 

It is his brother, his _brother_ taking him. 

He thinks he is weeping.

When Loki finally kisses him, Thor dissolves into it, and he remembers nothing else of that night, no matter how he wishes he could.

* * *

Sunlight.

Sunlight bursting over him. 

Thor throws his forearm across his eyes to blot it out.

But there is another body in bed with him, and that body turns and wraps a long, gangly arm around his chest. A long, lanky leg across his thighs. 

Thor breathes. A scent like wild mint and musk and apples and faint wood-smoke, wafting at him from the soft, crow-black hair that brushes against his shoulder.

His brother in bed with him. 

It is one of those moments. Those moments that you know already, before they are done, that they will become precious. 

Thor dares not move. Instead he spends long minutes memorizing it all. Casting his thought back on everything he remembers. And even the things he doesn’t. There is a stickiness between his legs. And he _doesn’t_ remember Loki spilling inside him. But he knows it happened, and he wishes he did. He wants to repeat it again, now, so that he will. 

When Loki at last stirs beside him, some part of Thor thrills.

The brother-lovers awakening after their night together. 

The wrongness of it. What everyone else would say. And what he knows, something else entirely.

“I love you,” Thor says, as soon as he is sure Loki’s eyes have opened. 

Loki stiffens against him, just slightly.

But that is just as it should be, just as it has always been. 

Thor breathes deep, remembers their first day together. Testing each other. Bruising each other. The joy of it. 

And knowing that they had been given to each other forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming along for the ride, y'all! Hope you liked this one! :D

**Author's Note:**

> My little joke is that my invented verses are in trochaic tetrameter, or cheap imitation Kalevala metre. The legend mentioned in this fic is derived from the story of Kullervo from the Finnish Kalevala, and also from the story of Turin and Nienor of Tolkien’s Silmarillion (which likewise drew from Kullervo). It obviously had many adventures before it made it into Asgard’s archives.


End file.
